Monthly Archives: January 2018

Oh man, you are such a delight. When you are asked how old you are, you hold out your whole hand and say “2!”

You can say four words in a row to express an idea. You can say words with four syllables. You like to “read” your books and point out the exclamation points and question marks and periods. Even though you don’t know words yet, you can point out letters and you know which book is which so when you are “reading” Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? you tell us that story instead of Good Night Moon or Freight Train.

You can count to 10 in English and Hebrew. You can sing the alphabet in English and Hebrew. You know your colors.

You love your “animals” (loveys). You ask for help. Yesterday you proudly proclaimed “all by myself!” for the first time.

You are still a fairly impartial big brother, but ongoing you continue to become more and more interested in Glitter and she adores you. If you are in the same room she would rather watch you than do anything else.

It is impossible to believe two years have gone by since you were born. This has truly been the longest shortest time.

This weekend had a whole lot going on. But first let’s rewind to Thursday.

I took both of the children to the pediatrician for their well child visits (at the same time!) where I was informed they both had double ear infections (though Critter’s was on the way out). MOM OF THE YEAR RIGHT HERE.

On Friday a friend informed me their child had the flu. Which transported me back to our time together at library storytime the day before where this little one had HUGGED Glitter. So she is on Tamiflu now too!

Anyway, no one has gotten sick (or sicker) so thanks be to God for those mercies.

On Saturday my playgroup had a moms’ day/night that was so needed. I ate a lot of carbs, we workshopped preventative botox and there was of course, wine.

Today, we went on a day-date with Glitter (Critter napped at the grandparents’ house) to Omni Brewing. Which ironically is owned by some friends but they opened it when I was pregnant the first time so this is the first time I got to drink their beer!

(And we got Culver’s because you bring your own food to these places and today I REALLY needed a cheeseburger. Like I finished it and thought I SHOULD HAVE ORDERED TWO.)

Last week we did the same and visited the Fulton Taproom. So it has been nice to go out together and act like normal adults.

So there is this thing where my crockpot hates lentils and split peas. So this meal took like 11 hours to cook. I actually made it on Tuesday (and we ended up eating frozen pizza that night because disaster)so this meal became food for the rest of the week instead.

Pass it on!

Like this:

YOU GUYS. I just don’t know what to say here. At the current moment we are not planning exotically interesting things financially. More stay the course.

As always we’ll contribute 10 – 11% of our income to our 401(k)s. We’ll plan to save another 10% of our post-tax income in cash and investments. Something that helps us with this strategy is that we do not spend our raises. Thus, we can increase our budget when we need to due to cost of living increases, but we still have some extra cushion.

What do we have planned?

We’ll max out a Dependent Care FSA. We have never had one of these before! It won’t fully cover this year’s daycare bill but it WILL lower our taxable income. WIN!

Last year we maxed out our HSA and we spent all but $400 of it paying for Glitter’s birth and meeting our max out of pocket (party!). We’re hopeful we might be able to keep a little more cash in the HSA this year and actually invest it.

We’re planning for some (bigger) house purchases. We’ll be replacing both garage doors and openers this spring. It simply needs to be done. Our water softener has died (RIP) so we’re having a new one installed Friday. We also have saved to purchase a kitchen table (when we find it). I would like to (myself) paint our master bathroom. An entertainment center for the family room is on the way (and a new rug and lamp arrived earlier this month). All of these expenses are covered by the moving budget that we allocated last year – we didn’t spend all of the money in July when we moved because we knew it would take time to settle in and see what we needed.

Stay off cable TV.

We didn’t set up cable when we moved into our house and we plan to keep it this way. Instead we are using a combination of: an antenna (free TV from the air!!!), Sling, and Netflix. This combination allows us to watch all of the shows we love and thanks to Sling’s setup, we can watch TV when we want, not just live!

I preface this post by saying I have had a hard time writing about some things lately because I am just tired of lifestyle bloggers. I am tired of women selling other women this ugly lie that their life isn’t perfect yet because they don’t have a $70 planner with washi tape or they don’t wear extremely expensive athleisure all the time or they aren’t following a certain diet or workout regime. Which is to say nothing of the over-exposed, posed photos that look nothing at all like any of our real houses or real lives.

It is exhausting. None of us are keeping up, most of this stuff doesn’t even sound fun (like seriously how much time can you spend tearing up pieces of washi tape to stick in your planner?). And frankly I am bored.

Did I mention all of you are perfect, beautiful humans just the way you are?

ANYWAY. ONTO THE ACTUAL FUN

(Also I am about to tell you about some stuff I bought, this post is not sponsored, I think if nothing else this will make you giggle!)

I knew when Glitter arrived I was going to need buy some new clothes because it had been about a year (I wrote THIS post about two months into my capsule closet challenge) since I had bought much of ANYTHING besides wardrobe staple replacements (camis, black yoga pants). Oh, and a baggy tank that said “In Coffee We Trust” that my family has been very vocal in their disdain for.

Like, I needed a closet 911.

So I signed up for Trendsend (yes, it’s a referral link) because unlike other styling services there are no styling fees with this one and frankly A Stylish Friend I Trust told me that this is The Way.

I did the whole style profile thing where I told my Trendsend stylist everything about me. This included such minutiae as the fact that my personal style since elementary school has been “horseback rider,” that I hated the cold shoulder style, keyhole tops, and shirts that have tiny strings doing anything across one’s back, and that my personal style icon was Kate Middleton. Oh, and that anything they sent me needed to be breastfeeding friendly.

Do you know what was so super? They followed my instructions to a T!

I snapped my outfits so I could share them here. I preface this internet fashion show by saying this: I tried these things on at the end of a long day (hello, glasses) in my bathroom which has looked cleaner. An aside: I think we need to paint it white/cream because why is my bathroom robin’s egg blue and light brown?

Also, I need a full length mirror. But without further adieu.

Outfit 1

Outfit 2

Outfit 3

I ended up keeping the Spanx camo leggings (outfit 1) and the fluffy white sweater that felt like a blanket (outfit 2) because even though white/cream is mostly impractical in this “season” of life sometimes you have to treat yourself. I will also say that both of these things were comfy as H-E-double hockey sticks and that they looked nothing like any of the other things in my closet. I LOVED that my stylist picked things that were cute, yet challenged me to dress a little differently than I normally do.

Behind The Words

Hi, I'm Kat! I'm a wife, mother, and runner.

What else do you need to know?

I cook as much as I can, love spending every minute possible by the lake, and cannot stop watching reality TV. As a life-long resident of Minnesota, come with me as I document our life on The North Coast!